TY - GEN
T1 - MOBILE MANIPULATION PLATFORM FOR AUTONOMOUS INDOOR INSPECTIONS IN LOW-CLEARANCE AREAS
AU - Pearson, Erik
AU - Szenher, Paul
AU - Huang, Christine
AU - Englot, Brendan
N1 - Publisher Copyright:
Copyright © 2023 by ASME.
PY - 2023
Y1 - 2023
N2 - Mobile manipulators have been used for inspection, maintenance and repair tasks over the years, but there are some key limitations. Stability concerns typically require mobile platforms to be large in order to handle far-reaching manipulators, or for the manipulators to have drastically reduced workspaces to fit onto smaller mobile platforms. Therefore we propose a combination of two widely-used robots, the Clearpath Jackal unmanned ground vehicle and the Kinova Gen3 six degree-of-freedom manipulator. The Jackal has a small footprint and works well in low-clearance indoor environments. Extensive testing of localization, navigation and mapping using LiDAR sensors makes the Jackal a well developed mobile platform suitable for mobile manipulation. The Gen3 has a long reach with reasonable power consumption for manipulation tasks. A wrist camera for RGB-D sensing and a customizable end effector interface makes the Gen3 suitable for a myriad of manipulation tasks. Typically these features would result in an unstable platform, however with a few minor hardware and software modifications, we have produced a stable, high-performance mobile manipulation platform with significant mobility, reach, sensing, and maneuverability for indoor inspection tasks, without degradation of the component robots’ individual capabilities. These assertions were investigated with hardware via semi-autonomous navigation to waypoints in a busy indoor environment, and high-precision self-alignment alongside planar structures for intervention tasks.
AB - Mobile manipulators have been used for inspection, maintenance and repair tasks over the years, but there are some key limitations. Stability concerns typically require mobile platforms to be large in order to handle far-reaching manipulators, or for the manipulators to have drastically reduced workspaces to fit onto smaller mobile platforms. Therefore we propose a combination of two widely-used robots, the Clearpath Jackal unmanned ground vehicle and the Kinova Gen3 six degree-of-freedom manipulator. The Jackal has a small footprint and works well in low-clearance indoor environments. Extensive testing of localization, navigation and mapping using LiDAR sensors makes the Jackal a well developed mobile platform suitable for mobile manipulation. The Gen3 has a long reach with reasonable power consumption for manipulation tasks. A wrist camera for RGB-D sensing and a customizable end effector interface makes the Gen3 suitable for a myriad of manipulation tasks. Typically these features would result in an unstable platform, however with a few minor hardware and software modifications, we have produced a stable, high-performance mobile manipulation platform with significant mobility, reach, sensing, and maneuverability for indoor inspection tasks, without degradation of the component robots’ individual capabilities. These assertions were investigated with hardware via semi-autonomous navigation to waypoints in a busy indoor environment, and high-precision self-alignment alongside planar structures for intervention tasks.
KW - Automatic Navigating Control
KW - Networked Information Processing
KW - Vehicle Environment Perception
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85178624374&partnerID=8YFLogxK
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/citedby.url?scp=85178624374&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1115/DETC2023-111245
DO - 10.1115/DETC2023-111245
M3 - Conference contribution
AN - SCOPUS:85178624374
T3 - Proceedings of the ASME Design Engineering Technical Conference
BT - 25th International Conference on Advanced Vehicle Technologies (AVT)
T2 - ASME 2023 International Design Engineering Technical Conferences and Computers and Information in Engineering Conference, IDETC-CIE 2023
Y2 - 20 August 2023 through 23 August 2023
ER -